This class specifies most of the implementation for communicating with an XML Web service over HTTP using encoders to encode the parameters and return values into common MIME formats. These encoders derive from the MimeFormatter class. By default, a proxy class deriving from HttpSimpleClientProtocol encodes parameters using the application/x-www-form-urlencoded MIME type and the response in plain XML. Custom mime formatters can be specified using the HttpMethodAttribute attribute, however, there is no support for integrating this into a service description and proxy generation.

Notes to Inheritors: When you override this class, you can introduce methods in the derived class that are specific to a particular type of an XML Web service. The methods simply capture the parameters, and call the base class to do the work of communicating with the site. If the introduced methods are asynchronous, call the BeginInvoke and EndInvoke methods. If the introduced methods are synchronous, call the Invoke method. The overridden constructor typically sets the Url property to the URI of the XML Web service method.

The Web Services Description Language tool (Wsdl.exe) generates derived classes of HttpSimpleClientProtocol for a given Service Description.

The following code example is a proxy class generated by Wsdl.exe for the Math XML Web service below. The proxy class derives from HttpGetClientProtocol, which derives from the abstract HttpSimpleClientProtocol class.